Shades Of Green
by Nesserz
Summary: Someone has Spray-Painted the Dursley's car bright green. Harry wasn't even home for the year but he is certain to get the blame. The only problem is, if Harry didn't deface the Dursley's car, just who did?


Dicsclaimer: I do not own the following characters, they belong to the wonderful J.K. Rowling.

Author Note: This story was a Plot Bunny devised by EmmyLou who can be found over at FictionAlley, her Bunnies are there by the hundreds...literally! I claimed a few sentences from her and have mutilated them into a story of my own. Kudos to you Emmy!

And also, I'd like to take the time to mention that my story was Beta'd by the ever humourous Huugs, who also can be found at FictionAlley. Thanks Huugs, I appreciate your Britpicking. shakes her head at the lawn...er grass! )

Enjoy everyone!

Shades of Green (a.k.a. Getting the Blame)

By Nesserz.

Harry Potter walked towards number Four Privet drive, slowly but surely. Upon sighting the object of his destination he glared. The house and yard hadn't changed at all since he'd last seen it, almost a year ago. He'd been away at school all year, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to be exact, the happiest place on Earth, as far as Harry was concerned.

Harry walked across the front lawn, something that he knew his Aunt and Uncle hated, which was the precise reason that he did it. On purpose, he scuffed his feet along the ground, making the grass appear scruffy and unkempt. Two things that he knew made the Dursley's flinch.

Harry duly noted that their car must have been in the garage as it certainly hadn't been out and about on the road, travelling to King's Cross Station to be his means of transport home. No, certainly not. The Dursley's had sunk to a new low. They hadn't even bothered to come and pick him up. Not that Harry was especially sad about it, he didn't want to spend time with them any more than they wanted to spend time with him. Still, the least they could have done was come and pick him up.

Harry, having crossed the yard, knocked smartly on the door, making as much noise as possible, anything to annoy the Dursley's. A pounding noise sounded from behind the door and Harry stood back, expecting to be run over by whatever awful thing belonged to the noise. He wasn't overly surprised to find that it was only Dudley. Dudley however, shrieked and ran back into the house, leaving the door wide open. He had obviously been hoping that Harry wouldn't have found his way home had they not picked him up. He was sorely disappointed however.

Harry sighed and stepped over the threshold, lugging his heavy trunk full of his belongings behind him.

"Honey, I'm home!" He called out to the silent house. "Thanks for coming to pick me up Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, I'm ever so grateful," he yelled but was silenced when his Uncle came stomping out into the hall and slammed his fist into the wall opposite at the level of Harry's head. Harry looked at the fist then let his eyes follow the arm that it was attached to and soon found himself looking into the unpleasant face of Vernon Dursley.

"You know why we didn't come for you boy, don't act all innocent in front of me! We know what you did!" he breathed, his foul breath coming out in large unpleasant bursts in Harry's face. Harry grimaced and refrained from lifting a hand and pinching his nose. He enjoyed aggravating his Uncle but something told him that today he was aggravated quite enough. Still...that probably wouldn't stop him from provoking his Uncle just a little further.

"Actually, I don't. Enlighten me." Harry said, leaning against the wall, his arms folded.

His Uncle merely looked at him and Harry was pleased to see that a vein was pulsing grotesquely near his temple. If there was something else they didn't like in the Dursley household, it was leaning against things.

"Well then, I will," he said, ignoring Harry's chosen standing position. "Never let it be said that I didn't have a valid reason for whipping you," he said, a manic look on his face.

Harry gulped. He wasn't afraid of his Uncle, he just wasn't too thrilled at the thought of being slung over his knee at the age of sixteen. He followed Vernon back out the front door, noticing his Aunt and Dudley came after them, though they kept their distance from Harry, eyeing him warily.

"If it's about the grass I don't--" Harry began but was cut off rudely by his Uncle.

"It is _not _about the grass. What did you do to the--? You'll pay dearly for that." Vernon sneered as he saw the damage that Harry had brought upon his beloved grass.

Harry merely shrugged. He was sure what his Uncle had in store for him couldn't be any worse than the Detentions he'd done with Snape, his Potions teacher back at Hogwarts. Nothing compared to scraping Chameleon innards out of fifty cauldrons in one night. It wasn't common knowledge that Lizard guts tend to smell very ripe after being shut up in a dungeon for hours at a time, but Harry could certainly vouch that it was true. He'd been there, much to his disgust.

"So why are we here then?" Harry asked, almost lazily as he stood once again in the middle of the Dursley's front lawn.

"Get off the grass boy!" Vernon said, nostrils flaring. Harry stood where he was, arms folded.

"We're here Harry, because…well…" his Aunt started, wringing her hands, obviously very nervous. Harry looked at her expectantly, not prepared for what happened next.

"OUR BLOODY CAR IS GREEN!" Vernon yelled at the top of his voice, not far from Harry's ear. Harry clapped his hands over his ears and yelled back.

"I'm not bloody deaf!" he glared at his Uncle with a look of deep disgust on his face. "Wait…did you say…the car's…green?" he asked, disbelief evident in his voice.

"Thought you said you weren't deaf." Dudley said, scoffing, his five chins wobbling so much that Harry was reminded of jelly for a second. He shuddered and closed his eyes.

Dudley's confidence soon wavered when Harry tapped his front pocket lightly, indicating that his wand was currently residing there. Dudley whimpered and Harry, despite his recent bout of deafness due to his Uncles yelling, was sure he heard the word 'Mummy!' escape Dudley's mouth.Harry smiled, satisfied and turned back to his Uncle who had gone into the garage and was beckoning to Harry to follow him. Harry wasn't at all sure if he wanted to do this but after looking back at Petunia and seeing a petite nod from her, he walked into the garage and had to immediately turn a barking laugh into a hacking cough.

"S-sorry. Allergies. Must be the dust," he said lamely. He realised soon after that there wouldn't be any dust in the Dursley's immaculate house or garage. He took a closer look at the Dursley's once white, mint conditioned car. The car was certainly mint _coloured_, but it wasn't the car that he'd seen sitting out the front of their house when they'd first brought it back from the dealers. His Uncle had been telling the truth.

Someone had gone to great lengths to spray paint the Dursley's car in vivid arrays of green. The doors had elaborate swirls on them, the bonnet of the car had a large four leaved clover on the front. The rear windows read: 'It's not easy being Green!' The hubcaps had smiley faces painted on them, and the front panels were covered with polka dots of all different sizes. Every side, every surface was covered with the fluorescent green that someone, or some_one's_, had chosen to decorate the Dursley's car with.

"You see why we didn't come to pick you up, don't you, you delinquent? I suppose you think this is funny?" Vernon said as he seethed with anger, swelling up to a size that Harry was sure couldn't be healthy for a man of his stature.

"What exactly do you want me to say about this?" Harry asked, once again trying to control the laughter that was brewing in his throat.

"What do we want…?" Vernon said, trailing off as his face began to change colours. First it started at much the same colour as the car then it grew steadily darker and as it went through the colours of the rainbow, it ended up at violet. "We want you to fix it!" he said, spitting as he spoke.

Harry backed away to avoid a shower that he didn't need, muttering under his breath, "Say it, don't spray it."

"What did you say boy?" Vernon said, narrowing his eyes at Harry who lifted his hands in surrender.

"Nothing, nothing." He muttered as he again took in the appearance of the car. He had a hard time controlling his laughter as an Owl landed on the roof of the car, holding a letter in its beak.

"Get that ruddy bird off my car!" his Uncle yelled as he waved his hands at it. "Shoo you ugly beast!"

"I'm sure she could say the same about you," Harry said quietly as he walked toward the car. "What's that you've got there girl?" he asked as he reached out to take the letter. He fished an Owl treat out of his pocket and fed it to the waiting animal who hooted in thanks and flew off, but not before leaving a deposit on the car of a smelly nature.

Harry once again turned his laughter into an unbelievable cough. He pocketed his letter, thinking that now wouldn't be the best time to open it.

"Well?" his Uncle said, indicating the car standing in all of it's mouldy looking glory.

"Well what? You think I did this? Sorry but you're sorely mistaken."

"It looks like something _your_ lot would do," he said, lowering his voice as he reached the part about Harry's 'friends' in the magical world.

"_My _lot?" Harry said, his amusement ebbing away to be replaced with anger at his 'Uncle' referring to the friends and family he had forged in the wizarding world as though they were _his. _Harry didn't _own _anyone. Nor did anyone own him. Harry's anger was soon replaced yet again with amusement. "You think 'my lot' as you put it, use _spray paint_? We have better means of defacing something than using common Muggle _paint_." Harry said disgustedly.

For the first time since he'd gotten home, Harry saw a flash of horror on his Uncle's face. He hated when Harry spoke of his wizarding family and friends, and made the Dursley's out to be the freaks. If anyone was freaky, it was the boy, him and his namby pamby…stuff. The 'Magic' word was not allowed to be thought of in their house, let alone spoken of.

"Well who do you suppose did this then?" Vernon asked, realising that yelling at the boy was getting him nowhere. Besides, he didn't want to draw too much attention to them. The last thing he needed was the neighbours looking out of their curtained windows and into the Dursley's garage and seeing his prized possession in its current state.

"Someone who I daresay is watching right now and having a right old laugh." Harry said, sticking his head outside as if to catch out the perpetrator.

Harry secretly thought to himself that if he ever found out who had defaced the Dursley's car so cleverly, he would supply them with a lifetime's supply of Butterbeer and Honeyduke's Finest Chocolate. You couldn't go wrong with either of these things, that much he knew.

"Why you little…get out of my sight! If you didn't do this I don't know who did. Normal people don't go around doing things like this. It had to be one of--"

"If you say 'one of my lot' I will do more damage to your car. Personally, I'm rather offended. I wish I'd thought of doing something like this." Harry said as he pulled his wand lazily out of his back pocket and pointed it at different parts of the car, and using his wand as an air-rifle, mimed shooting holes into the car.

"Put. It. Away." Vernon snarled.

"No, I don't think I will thanks." Harry said as he twirled it in his hands, grinning.

"You'll do as I say or--"

"Or what?" Harry asked, clearly amused as to how annoyed his Uncle was.

"Get out of my sight." he muttered, stomping out of the garage and back to the house and slamming the door shut but not before Harry called to his retreating back.

Harry waited for his Uncle to have quietened down in the house before he went inside himself and upstairs to his room, stowing his trunk at the end of his bed. As soon as he'd done this, he went back down stairs as he had no intention of staying locked indoors for the summer if he could help it.

Feeling rather amused and in a generally good mood, something Harry didn't usually associate with his Summers, he walked down _Wisteria Way _and soon found himself at the small Muggle playground that had been in the area for as long as Harry had been with the Dursley's. Too bloody long in his opinion.

He sat down on one of the swings and dug his foot into the dirt, moving it around making patterns. As he swung gently, he remembered the letter that he'd gotten when he'd been getting yelled at for something he hadn't even done.

He pulled the rumpled envelope out of his pocket and noticed that it had his name written on the front. It looked strange but he couldn't work out just what it was that was so strange. The writing looked as though it were perhaps a female's, swirly and slanty. Yes, definitely feminine he decided. It wasn't familiar. He frowned and lifted the seal on the back of the envelope and pulled out the small piece of parchment inside. He unfolded it and noticed that it was written in a dark green ink, which made him immediately think of the Dursley's car again. Leaning forward slightly, he read what was in front of him.

_Wotcher Harry!_

_Thought that the Muggles deserved a bit of a surprise present seeing as how they are so terribly nice to you. (Do you sense the sarcasm?) Don't think they exactly listened to what we had to say last year, did they? Heard what you said about 'your lot' not doing something like that, but turned out that that spray stuff is rather fun to play around with. Leaves a nasty stain on your hands though. Look after yourself Harry. In the words of that weird green Muggle frog 'It's not easy being green!' _

_Tonks._

_P.S. I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention this to any of the Order members. They seem to think this kind of thing is called 'Muggle Baiting'. I personally, call it payback. Bit uptight they all are I think._

Harry finished the letter, a large grin on his face. Leave it to Tonk's to do something of this nature. Harry was almost certain it had been a Muggle that had done the defacing. Well, he knew one thing for certain, he wasn't about to tell his Uncle the truth. He wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of being right.

Harry folded up his letter and stood up, heading slowly back to the Dursley's not sure if the summer was going to be pleasant or unpleasant because of Tonks's unexpected 'present'.He decided that it was going to be...different. That's all he could say at the present moment in time. The Dursley's never knew what to expect next when it came to Harry so the summers always made for an interesting time for all.

Harry climbed the stairs to his room, shutting the door quietly behind him, sat down and took out a Quill.

_To the owner's of Honeydukes, _

_I would like a lifetime's supply of Butterbeer and your finest chocolate sent to one Nymphadora Tonks, please take the money out of my vault. Please enclose with my order, a single Chocolate Frog with a note saying 'It's easier than you think being green.' This may sound like a strange request, but it's a running joke between a friend and I. _

_Thanking you in advance, _

_Harry Potter._

I hope this story was a nice read for everyone, another of Emmy's bunnies brought to life...albeit probably not as well as it could have been but I certainly enjoyed writing it.

Nesserz.


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